The Weeds of Sin and the Fruit of the Spirit

I was thinking about the fruit of the Spirit recently and engaged in a bit of reverse engineering, or reverse gardening—to coin a concept. In other words I took the fruit of the Spirit and sought to ask what are the corresponding weeds.

And bearing in mind what my brother in Christ, Andrew Kerr, said last week in his post on sin—in point 12:

“The faithful Gospel minister will be prayerful and careful to deal with ‘respectable sins’ instead of always hitting ‘home runs’”
I thought it would be beneficial to not just nail the weeds of the world, but the respectable Christian versions of those weeds too.

I’m reasonably ok at spotting weeds in the garden when it comes to the usual suspects, but there are a few that look pretty, and have been left to establish a foothold where they should have been rooted out. Likewise with Christian weeds—these respectable sins.

There's another category: Have you ever been conned by plastic fruit sitting in a bowl? It looks the part, but isn’t the real thing. Christians can have artificial fruit too—it looks the part, but isn't the work of the Spirit, and brings no joy. What does this artificial fruit look like?

So here’s my gardeners' identification chart for the weeds of sin and the fruit of the Spirit: